As most of you probably know, I work for an MSP. We throw out an insane number of IT gear, quite a lot of it not even 5 years old. To this end, I rescue a lot of the stuff that tends to try and get stuffed into the e-waste bins.
The cosmetic condition was...OK. A few scuffs, but not too bad.
Notice something? Yep, it's a Ryzen! Which means a much stronger iGPU than the Intel equivalent - it was one of the primary reasons i kept this rather than refurb it to sell.
Now there was no RAM or SSD in it, but that's fine, I have plenty of those laying around, also rescued from e-waste.
Two 8GB DDR4-3200MHz SO-DIMM's go in...
And a 960GB Kingston SATA SSD. Annoyingly, i've just found a 512GB NVMe M.2, so I might still swap that out.
Well, it boots at least. Not the beefiest CPU in the world, but should be fairly solid, 4 cores, 8 threads, decent iGPU. The only difference between this and the 3700U is the clock speed, and the iGPU has two more execution units.
But that screen. Eugh. Yeah it's supposed to be an IPS panel but it's SO ugly. Dim, colour reproduction is pretty damn shoddy.
The original panel is a BOE NV140FHM-N49 v8.3 (mouthful, much?!), which is indeed an IPS panel, but with 250 cd/m² brightness and viewing angles of 85/85/85/85, contrast ratio of 800:1.
Some googling showed that there is a direct replacement panel - the Innolux N140HCE-EN1 Rev C.4 which has 300 cd/m² brightess, viewing angles of 89/89/89/89, contrast ratio of 700:1 (a little lower).
However, the big difference is the colour reproduction. The BOE panel? 62.5% sRGB, maximum. The Innolux panel? 100% sRGB!
On top of that, the panels have wildly varying response times - the BOE panel was 30ms typical, the Innolux is 14/11ms typical - and it took all of 10 minutes to swap out, the fiddliest bit, wasn't removing the bezel (that unclipped in about 10 seconds), it was my fat fingers swapping the 30-pin eDP connector!
Looks good already, but then peel off the plastic and re-fit the bezel...
Totaloutlay for this project so far?
Uhm - £36.99. Including free shipping.
Not bad for a laptop that was destined for the crusher!
The cosmetic condition was...OK. A few scuffs, but not too bad.
Notice something? Yep, it's a Ryzen! Which means a much stronger iGPU than the Intel equivalent - it was one of the primary reasons i kept this rather than refurb it to sell.
Now there was no RAM or SSD in it, but that's fine, I have plenty of those laying around, also rescued from e-waste.
Two 8GB DDR4-3200MHz SO-DIMM's go in...
And a 960GB Kingston SATA SSD. Annoyingly, i've just found a 512GB NVMe M.2, so I might still swap that out.
Well, it boots at least. Not the beefiest CPU in the world, but should be fairly solid, 4 cores, 8 threads, decent iGPU. The only difference between this and the 3700U is the clock speed, and the iGPU has two more execution units.
But that screen. Eugh. Yeah it's supposed to be an IPS panel but it's SO ugly. Dim, colour reproduction is pretty damn shoddy.
The original panel is a BOE NV140FHM-N49 v8.3 (mouthful, much?!), which is indeed an IPS panel, but with 250 cd/m² brightness and viewing angles of 85/85/85/85, contrast ratio of 800:1.
Some googling showed that there is a direct replacement panel - the Innolux N140HCE-EN1 Rev C.4 which has 300 cd/m² brightess, viewing angles of 89/89/89/89, contrast ratio of 700:1 (a little lower).
However, the big difference is the colour reproduction. The BOE panel? 62.5% sRGB, maximum. The Innolux panel? 100% sRGB!
On top of that, the panels have wildly varying response times - the BOE panel was 30ms typical, the Innolux is 14/11ms typical - and it took all of 10 minutes to swap out, the fiddliest bit, wasn't removing the bezel (that unclipped in about 10 seconds), it was my fat fingers swapping the 30-pin eDP connector!
Looks good already, but then peel off the plastic and re-fit the bezel...
Uhm - £36.99. Including free shipping.
Not bad for a laptop that was destined for the crusher!
